


writing home

by Odyle



Category: Book Group
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Not Beta Read
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-11
Updated: 2014-08-11
Packaged: 2018-02-12 16:12:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2116323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Odyle/pseuds/Odyle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe her crazy thoughts had had a point.</p>
            </blockquote>





	writing home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ishie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishie/gifts).



> This work has not been beta read in any way, shape, or form. Abandon all hope for accuracy all ye who enter.

Their goodbye was awkward. 

It was only for a few weeks. She would be stateside for three weeks to sleep in her childhood bedroom, go with her mom to Christmas Vespers and Midnight Mass, and eat too much chicken paprikash. 

Jean was going to be elsewhere for Christmas, which was the majority of why Clare decided to go home. Her mom had sounded sad on the phone when they had spoken throughout the summer and fall. It was hard on her to be alone in the house, particularly now that her father had passed and she had no one there for company. Once Jean announced that she would be too busy to go home, Clare booked her ticket. She appreciated not having to share her mother on a rare visit. 

It was not forever. She would be back before New Year’s. Kenny would be busy with his family and his friends. Christmases were loud and occasionally raucous where the McLeods were concerned. Clare had suffered through a few only through seasonally acceptable day drinking. She would miss him, but they would both be fine. 

Clare couldn’t pin down a reason she felt so tense about it. She’d worried in the taxi to the airport that he was going to break up with her. Kenny’s behavior in the past few days had done nothing to calm her. He seemed tense all of the time. They had argued a few days before, but all of that had seemed settled. She wound herself up enough that she started crying a little sitting beside him in the back of the taxi. Clare tried to hide it by turning away to face the window. Kenny put a hand on her knee, but didn’t say anything. She bit her lip to keep herself from crying any harder. 

Kenny insisted on seeing her off at the airport. She wasn’t sure why, probably just because it was romantic. At any rate, he sat with her carry on while she went to check in. It was a helpful gesture, if not completely necessary. It just made her sadder to turn around from the ticket counter and see him waiting there for her, stationed by one of the columns. 

“So, I guess I’ll see you,” Clare said as she rejoined him. 

“I have something for you.” 

He reached around in the pockets of his jeans, looking for something, until he seemed to realize that it wasn’t there. Clare stood and stared, waiting until he came up with a USB drive. After a moment’s hesitation, he handed it to her. 

“It’s the latest draft. I thought you could edit it if you have time,” Kenny said as he handed her the stick. 

“Oh, okay.” 

Clare fumbled around with her carry on, eventually slipping it into the sleeve that held her laptop. Kenny often asked her to edit his drafts once he was done with them, but before he sent them off to his editor. She worked as his assistant. She sorted through his fan mail and kept his calendar. His following only increased with each new novel he put out. The publisher was talking about reprinting the books in Australia and New Zealand. He was making decent money at it--enough to live in his own place and keep her employed as his assistant. 

She had started strictly as his assistant. Everything else had come about later. 

She didn’t get a chance to read any of the draft until her plane landed for a layover in Toronto. 

The airport was already overrun with tourists going home for the holidays. There was nowhere to sit near her gate. There were two flights worth of passengers waiting around the gate for their flight to start boarding. She went and found an outlet near the Tim Horton's. Clare camped out on the ground with her laptop, three slightly stale doughnuts, and an iced mocha with too much ice. 

_It was a cold spring in Glasgow. The mornings were frigid and the city was sleepy._

_Ellen was a stranger in Glasgow. She had come to the city to find inspiration, but all she had found so far was trouble. Sometimes she thought about going home, to Cleveland, but she had stayed strong._

He didn't like for her to read his drafts until he was done with them. This one he'd been particularly secretive about. Usually, he would tell her what the story was about or read her bits that he was particularly proud of. This time, he'd refused. Reading through it, Clare couldn’t put her figure out why. The setting and characters were more mundane than Kenny typically wrote, but maybe it was a sign that he was trying to be more serious about his writing. Whatever had made him uneasy had to be something in later chapters, she decided as she reached the end of the first. 

Clare packed away her laptop and went to her gate to catch her connection. 

Her body protested that it was three or four in the morning when she landed in Cincinnati. Her mother gathered her in her arms and held her tight, babbling about how much she missed her. She was warm and soft and smelled like the same perfume she’d worn since Clare was in the 5th grade. Clare remembered going with her mother to the perfume counter at a department store and helping her to pick out a scent. Jean hadn’t been invited. It had been just the two of them. Suddenly, Clare remembered why it was good to go home. 

The neighbors still had a plastic Nativity scene in their front yard, though two of the Wise Men had seen better days. They had been bandaged up with packing tape and turned tactfully so their backs were hidden by a holly bush. 

Her house looked the same as the last time she’d seen it, though her mom insisted on giving her a tour of all of the minute changes that had been before she released Clare to go upstairs and crash. When she finally made it upstairs, Clare thought for a moment about reading more of the draft before she went to sleep. There was plenty of time for that, she decided, then crawled into bed to catch up to her new time zone.

\---

She held off on writing to him for a day. They spent so much time together what with the working and the also being boyfriend and girlfriend. Coming without him had been important to get some space from him, Clare had told herself. As they spent more and more time together, they seemed to get closer and closer. Not the same way as it had been with past boyfriends. Old boyfriends had always seemed to converge with her until they were almost the same person, no longer independent beings. I didn’t feel that way with Kenny. They were just as different as they had always been, but they were comfortable with each other. It was new. It was different. And Clare was not completely at ease with it.

She opened her email and dashed off a quick message. 

_My mom has kept me busy since I got here. Jean isn’t coming home for Christmas, so it’s just me and Mom. She’s gone a little overboard. Yesterday we went and bought a tree. We spent the whole afternoon decorating it._

_I’ve only been able to read the first few chapters. I really like it so far._

_\- Clare_

She sent it before she could reconsider.

\---

Her mom waited three days before she scared Clare out of bed and took her to the mall. Clare had never been a particular fan of the mall. Even as a teenager, she’d preferred to hang out at the movies or at the library at the local college rather than hang out at the mall. Age did nothing to improve her opinion of it, but her mom had Christmas shopping to do.

She agreed to go on the condition that she didn’t have to follow her mother around, that she could run her own errands. Her mom agreed, pleased that Clare was showing enthusiasm about something. Clare grabbed the usb stick out of her bag and slipped it into her purse. 

Clare made her way to the Kinkos when they arrived at the mall. She printed off the draft then took it to the front counter and paid for it to be bound. The clerk gave it back to her bound and in a waxy brown paper bag and Clare paid too much for the service. 

She wandered to the food court with the manuscript in her arms. The cookie place was still there, so she bought one and took a seat at an out of the way table and pulled out the manuscript to read. 

_The tall, dark, and handsome man caught Ellen’s attention. His voice was deep and steady as he read his chosen passage aloud to the group. She found herself affected by the sound, but kept her composure. Ellen wanted to know more about him, but it wasn’t the time or the place._

_As the club members finished their pints and said their goodbyes, Ellen approached the stranger._

_“I’m afraid we haven’t met,” Ellen said, offering the man her hand. “My name is Ellen.”_

_“Welcome, Ellen,” the stranger said. “My name is Ian.”_

_She noticed for the first time that he was in a wheelchair as he pushed himself away from the table and turned to take her hand.  
_

They had agreed to meet in front of the Waldenbooks at four o’clock. Her mom wasn’t there yet, so she ducked inside to browse. Their magazine selection hadn’t improved since she’d left for Glasgow. Vladimir Putin was on the cover of TIME for some reason. Clare couldn’t be bothered to pick up the magazine and find out. At least she didn’t recognize any of the names or faces on the covers of the gossip magazines. Clare prided herself on being out of the loop of American pop culture before grabbing a copy of The New Yorker and wandering further into the store. 

She made a pass by the Romance section. None of Kenny’s books were on the shelf. The publisher had done a limited run of his novel [fake name] for the US. They had him pick a feminine pseudonym to go on the cover, insisting that women in the North American market wouldn’t buy a romance novel with a man’s name on the cover.

Clare wandered through the store, pulling interesting titles off the shelf then putting them back. There was no reason to buy and books. It would only be something more she had to carry home and her mom had already checked out a stack of books for her from their local library. 

After checking the new hardbacks to make sure absolutely nothing caught her interest, Clare fished a twenty out of her purse and went to check out. She paused before handing the bill to the cashier as she noticed for the first time that they the bill was now peach and green. The cashier was staring at her when she snapped out of it. Clare studiously avoided eye contact with him as she took her change and her bag. 

Her mom was staring at the ornaments in the window at that Hallmark next door when Clare emerged. 

“Did you find something good?” her mom asked. 

“Just a magazine,” Clare said. “Are we done here?”

\---

She had a dream where she and Kenny were decorating a Christmas tree in the living room just downstairs. He handed her ornaments and she hung them on the tree. As dreams went, it was a boring one. They hadn’t done anything but unwrap ornaments, put them on hooks, and hang them on the tree.

Usually when she had dreams about Kenny, they were at least sexy. This one was the opposite of sexy. They were both wearing awful Goodwill Christmas sweaters and there was a minimum of touching. Clare woke up frustrated and alone. 

Kenny hadn’t written her back yet. He wasn’t great with technology or big on email, but Clare still took it as a sign of his apathy. If he missed her, he would have sucked it up and written her back. Either he didn’t miss her or he was dead. One or the other. She didn’t know which she would prefer.

\---

On her fourth day home, Clare voluntarily went to Target with her mother. She brought home a wi-fi router and set it up for her mom. It didn’t really make much of a difference to her mom. She still had the same ancient desktop that Clare had set up for her the summer after her freshman year. It had been a major step to move her mom to Comcast from AOL.

Clare set the whole thing up then retreated upstairs to her room to see if it was working. After typing in the password three times to get it right, she found herself connected to wi-fi. It was a blessing to not have to get out of bed to check her email. Moreover, there was a message from Kenny in her inbox. 

 

_things are quiet here. i spent yesterday at home working on my new draft. i’m going to andrew’s today to watch the match._

_i’m glad you like the story._

_my mum says hello. i miss you._

_kenny  
_

So he wasn’t dead. He said he missed her, which wasn’t something she’d accounted for in the wild scenarios in her head. 

Clare put away her laptop and pulled out the manuscript. She was almost half way through the book. It was less fantastic than his previous novels. Kenny’s fans had come to expect a degree of escapism in his novels, but they would like this too, Clare thought. It was sweet, even if it was incredibly mundane. 

_Ellen jogged beside Ian, hard pressed to keep up with him._

_“It’s not fair,” she gasped when she caught up with him._

_“Do you want to trade,” Ian asked. He laughed at her as she put her hands on his shoulders as she rested. The rumble of his laugh did things to her. She wondered if he knew just how._

\---

She and her mother watched Jeopardy as they stamped and addressed Christmas cards. They took turns shouting at the TV. Clare did better at history and philosophy. Her mom did better with current events and music. They were both hopeless at sports.

“Do you have Kenny’s mother’s address?” her mom asked. 

“Why do you want that?” Clare asked. 

“You’ve been together for two years. I figure I better get to know them. What better way is there to break the ice than a Christmas card?” 

Clare looked down at the card she was about to stuff in an envelope. She wasn’t sure what the McLeods would make of Santa’s reindeer snacking on buckeyes, muchless the notes inside about her mother’s trip to Branson. 

“I can’t remember. I’ll ask Kenny.” 

She wouldn’t ask Kenny. 

Clare didn’t exactly get along well with Kenny’s family. They tolerated her because he liked her so much. In return, she tried desperately not to alienate them. Most of the time in their company, she sat very still, made no sudden movements, and said as little as possible. It worked half the time.

\---

_I went to a potluck with my mom at her church. A lot of the food there is sort of gross when you think about it, but I’ve missed it. I ate way too much casserole: tuna casserole, green bean casserole, tater tot casserole, turkey casserole. I haven’t seen so many casseroles since my grandma died._

_Things are really boring here. But, good for you, that means I’ve had the time to read more of your draft. This is a lot different than anything you’ve ever written. That’s not a bad thing. I really like it. I feel like I know Ellen and Ian. I don’t know if I like them, but that doesn’t matter. I’ve only got a few more chapters to read, so I’ll probably be done sometime this weekend._

_I hope you’re well._

_\- Clare_

Clare stared at her screen. It was a boring email, but there wasn’t much to write home about it. She doubted that he cared much about her mom pressing her into butter cookie duty or forever stamps. On second consideration, she deleted the last line and added in “I miss you.” If he could say it, so could she.

\---

Her mother shouted up the stairs. Clare couldn’t hear what she said, but tossed the manuscript aside and rushed downstairs, afraid that her mom had burned herself on another batch of snickerdoodles. Instead, she found her mom seated on the couch, still in her apron, shouting into the phone.

“Jean,” her mom said. “I’ve got Clare here.” 

“I don’t need to talk to her,” Clare said. 

“Tell your sister ‘Merry Christmas’,” her mom said, holding out the phone to her. 

Clare sighed and took the phone. 

“Merry Christmas,” she muttered. 

“What?” Jean shouted on the other end of the line. 

“Merry. Christmas,” Clare said, then handed the phone back to her mother, who scowled at her. 

She swiped a cookie off the cooling rack before returning to her room. 

By this point, she was engrossed in the manuscript. It was hard to keep her distance the first time she read his drafts. Clare usually read them three times before she made any edits to them. It took three times to gain some distance from the work. She hadn’t gotten any better at it yet. 

_”I don’t want to leave you,” Ellen said, tears rolling down her cheeks. “But I have to. And I don’t know if I’ll ever return.”_

_“Don’t go,” Ian said, wiping the tears away. “Marry me.”  
_

She kept reading as they kissed and got married and Ellen didn’t get deported. The good triumphed. The evil suffered. There was something too easy about everything. 

A message from Kenny waited in her inbox when she turned on her laptop. 

_i guess you are done by now. what did you think?_

_kenny_

What did she think? It was terribly romantic. She had been rooting for them to marry and ride off into the sunset. 

The whole situation with the marriage was something she’d fantasized about once upon a time. That had been before Kenny and his publisher had worked around things to find a way to hire her on as his full time assistant and secure a work visa. In that particular fantasy, she’d cast Kenny as her savior. He’d married her, she’d been cleared to stay in the country, and then they fell madly in love. It was a complete fantasy, Clare had realized in retrospect, but one that she had enjoyed thoroughly at the time. 

_I don’t know quite what to think. I need to read it again._

_-Clare_

It was a safe thing to say.

\---

Clare locked herself away in her room and reread the manuscript twice in one day. Her mom had done all of her laundry and helped her repack her bag for the trip back. The iPod her mom had gotten her for Christmas was easy enough to carry back. Fitting in the pounds of buckeyes her mom had bought for Kenny was more difficult. She had to move the manuscript from her checked luggage to her carryon to fit it.

Clare had put it in her checked bag for a reason. She didn’t want to look at the manuscript again until she had a chance to talk to Kenny about it. 

The more and more she thought about it, she wondered if it was a message or if it was something else. Had he been so lacking in inspiration that he’d written a book that was pretty much about their relationship? Had this been his fantasy? 

She sneaked a Klonopin from her mother’s medicine cabinet and took it to quell some of the flying jitters and the romantic crisis jitters. It wore off about an hour before they landed in Glasgow. She had a good cry, spooking the older couple sitting beside her, but had mostly composed herself by the time they touched down. 

He was waiting for her as she came out of Customs. Clare hurried to him, forgetting the manuscript in her bag and all of the crazy thoughts that had been plaguing her for days. She kissed him and he kissed her back. 

“Hello,” he said and smiled at her. 

“I missed you.”

\---

She fell asleep in the cab on the way back from the airport. Clare could sleep through Kenny’s snoring, but she couldn’t sleep with the steady low roar of the airplane all around her and so had not slept since leaving Cincinnati. The last thing she remembered was closing her eyes just to rest them in the back of the taxi. Kenny had to have woken her up at some point because she awoke in their bed back at the apartment in bed with her shoes, jeans, and bra off.

It was midmorning and other side of the bed was empty. She listened for him, but didn’t hear him moving around. Clare rolled over to lay on his side of the bed. His pillowcase smelled like his skin and there was an indentation in the mattress where he usually lay. She had missed him terribly. 

Kenny was in the kitchen writing when she finally got out of bed. He glanced up at her as she entered the room, but quickly refocused his gaze on his laptop, as if he did not want to acknowledge her presence. Sometimes when he was writing he got so focused that he ignored all else. She was the same way at times, so she didn’t fault him for it. 

At least, she didn’t fault him for it usually. It had been a few weeks since they had seen one another. She wanted him to put away his work and spend time with her. 

“What time is it?” Clare asked. 

“Two in the afternoon,” he said. 

“Do I need to go to the store?” Clare asked. 

“No, I went yesterday. There should be enough for a few days.” 

She went to check the refrigerator to see what he had bought. He’d done fairly well. It was more health conscious stuff than she would have chosen, but she could live with it. 

Clare wandered over to the table where Kenny was working. She put her hands on his shoulders, then leaned down to rest her chin on top of his head. Kenny’s hair had gotten a little long. He would need to have it cut once the new year started. 

“What’re you working on?” she asked him.

“A book.” 

“What kind of book?” 

 

“A book.” 

“Why won’t you tell me what kind?” 

“I’m trying to concentrate on my work.” 

Clare pulled away and stalked out of the room.

“Fine, don’t tell me,” she shouted.

She heard him call her name as she shut the bathroom door. Clare turned on the shower and waited for the water heater to moderate so she didn’t scald herself. 

Maybe her crazy thoughts had had a point. There was something peculiar in the way he treated her. It might be that he actually did want to break up with her. What if he’d just dated her to do research for his book? It was a long con, granted, but not beyond the realm of possibility. Clare felt sick. She contemplated hanging her head over the toilet and waiting for it to pass. Instead, she stripped out of her pajamas and stepped into the shower. 

The water felt good on her skin. The flat was old and only felt warm in the winter when you were either in the shower or curled up beneath a comforter. 

“Clare,” she heard over the roar of the shower. 

“Don’t come in,” she called. 

“I want to talk to you,” Kenny said. 

She was still too angry to talk to him and she didn’t particularly want him to break up with her while she was naked. He could at least wait until she had a towel on. 

“Go work on your book.” 

The bathroom door opened. He entered, rolling over her clothes where she’d left them on the floor. Clare stared at him from behind the glass of the shower stall. 

“I’m sorry, Clare.” 

For his part, he did look sorry. His face was slightly flushed and his shoulders were tense. 

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. 

Clare found her shower puff and body wash and set about showering. She expected Kenny to leave when it was plain that she intended to ignore him, but he sat there in silence and watched. 

“Are you going to watch me?” 

“Can’t a man enjoy a free show?” 

Clare rolled her eyes. “You’re disgusting.” 

Maybe he wasn’t that sorry. 

Clare shampooed her hair and tried to ignore her audience. She could feel his eyes on her. Moreover, a lot of the warm air was escaping from the bathroom into the rest of the apartment. 

“Did you think about the draft?” Kenny asked. 

“Yeah,” Clare said. “It was one of the best things you’ve ever written.” 

“And?”

“It’s too easy,” Clare said. “These two people are in love and there’s nothing stopping them… At least not enough to merit a book. They’re boring.” 

Love isn’t easy. Love is two idiots hurtling toward each other at full tilt, Clare wanted to tell him. 

Kenny was silent as she rinsed the shampoo from her hair. 

“I wrote it for you.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“It’s about us.” 

“Are you going to break up with me?” Clare asked. 

“What?” 

“Are you breaking up with me?” 

“I’m not breaking up with you, Clare.” 

“Because you’ve been really weird lately. If you’re going to break up with me, I would appreciate it if you had the decency to at least let me finish my shower first.” 

“I swear to you. I want to marry you.” 

“What?” 

“Will you marry me?” 

“Oh, fuck,” Clare said.

\---

They stayed in for New Years’ Eve. Clare had decided that she was too old to go out, particularly on a night where she would never be able to keep up. Kenny slipped out to the pub to have a pint, but they were both in bed and asleep before midnight.

“Good morning,” he said. 

Clare stretched. Everything felt stiff. She was very glad that they hadn’t gone out the night before. 

“Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit,” she muttered beneath her breath. 

Kenny pulled her closer and leaned over to kiss her, but she turned her head so he could only kiss her on the cheek. They both had horrible morning breath. While he didn’t seem to mind it, Clare didn’t want to kiss him until he’d brushed his teeth. He took his rejection in stride and kissed her along her jaw. One of his hands slipped beneath the hem of the old college t-shirt (THE OHIO STATE) she’d worn to sleep in. 

“I should call my mom,” Clare said. 

Kenny groaned and pulled his hand away. 

“She’ll be proud of me. Her first daughter to get married that isn’t committing visa fraud.” 

“You aren’t interested?” Kenny asked, lifting an eyebrow. 

“You feel me up all the time. I’ll come back to bed after I call my mom. She’s probably home from Aunt Lilly’s by now.” 

It was his turn to grumble. 

She rolled over onto her side to get a better look at him. He looked just the same as he had the day before, when he hadn’t been her fiance. 

“So I was thinking,” Clare said. “I don’t understand it.” 

“What don’t you understand?” 

“Why did you write a book that was just a nice version of us? ”

“Because I want to marry you. I thought it was romantic.” 

“You’ve got strange ideas about what’s romantic,” Clare said. 

“Clare.” 

“I love you,” she said. 

“I love you, too.”


End file.
